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He awoke to the taste of brine on his lips and the song of the sea in his ears.
The Crystal Exarch opened his eyes to be greeted by the wood ceiling of a fisherman’s shack with sunlight streaming through its cracks. Kholusia, he thought as his mind stirred to awareness an ilm slower than his body. The Tempest. I escaped. The Scions were… There was a light…
“Estrild?”
He was still suffering the strain of the days Emet-Selch held him captive, but he forced himself up. He was safe, he knew, but what of her?
“She's right there in case you haven’t noticed.”
Thancred, sitting on a crate in a half-shadowed corner with his gunblade resting across his lap, seemed faintly amused as he raised his chin in gesture. Blinking, the Exarch followed his gaze and yes, there she was, still asleep upon the straw mattress they had evidently been sharing, her tail curled around herself as her breaths came steady and certain.
“She insisted you should have the bed,” Thancred explained with a wry smile. “But seeing as she passed out not long after, Y’shtola decreed it was large enough for two. Ever practical, our Master Matoya.”
The Exarch could not help but let out a disbelieving chuckle. Y’shtola Rhul never kept her mistrust of him a secret—especially in regard to his motives and intentions regarding the Warrior of Darkness the stern Miqo’te woman seemed to care for as she would a younger sister. “Where is our ever practical Master Matoya, if I may ask?”
“Back at the Crystarium with the others. We decided it would be best to allow the two of you time to rest before your triumphant return, but they went ahead to assure the people of your safety. Seeing as I cannot teleport with them, I stayed behind to keep an eye on the two of you.”
Yes, it was slowly returning to him now. They had been all varying amounts of exhausted by the time they made it safely to the beaches of Kholusia, but he and Estrild were the ones who exerted themselves most severely in the confrontation with Emet-Selch—her in actually fighting him in his true guise and him through his summonings of seven other champions from beyond the rift to aid her—and it would’ve been only a matter of time before one or both of them collapsed from sheer exhaustion.
While there had been beds aplenty in Eulmore and the nearby towns of Wright and Stilltide upon which to rest, the relative quiet and privacy promised by Eybor when he offered his own home in Cracked Shell Beach overruled every other.
“There is food and water,” Thancred pointed to a nearby crate upon which sat a crystal decanter and two cups. Beside them were baskets lined with vibrant purple fabric full of fruit, cheese, and bread. “From the Chais. It should tide you over until our host returns with his day’s catch.”
The Exarch let out a small sigh of relief at the sight. With his connection to the Crystal Tower, he did not need food nor water to sustain himself, but these were unusual circumstances. And of course, Estrild would likely appreciate it once she awoke. “We’ll have to thank them before we leave.”
Thancred opened his mouth to reply, but then did a double-take. Abruptly, he stood, sheathing his gunblade in the holster on his back, “I believe it is time for me to take my leave.”
Startled by the brusque departure, the Exarch only had time to briefly wonder if he had done something to offend the Scion before he heard movement behind him and the soft groan of someone waking up.
Ah…
Nervously, he turned around and found Estrild sitting up, her back to him and rubbing the sleep from her eyes.
“…Was that Thancred?” she asked. “Why did he leave…?”
The Exarch swallowed. She had all but accepted his apologies already, had she not? But there was still so much more she deserved to know. Urianger would’ve already told her some things, wouldn’t he? But the Exarch had not shared absolutely everything with his conspirator. Things that were simply too personal to share with anyone but her…
“It was,” the Exarch answered. “I imagine he left so the two of us could speak privately.”
“I see.”
He watched her shoulders rise and fall as she sighed. Slowly, she turned around, tucking her legs beneath her and not quite meeting his eyes.
For the agonizing length of a heartbeat, the Crystal Exarch could not breathe. Where do I even begin?
Finally, she raised her head. “G’raha,” she said.
He spent nearly a hundred years distancing himself from who he once was. From the young man arriving in this world bearing hopes and legacy of a future past, to the traveler telling stories that became prophecies, to the founder of the Crystarium… Every role he played, every persona he crafted, was a layer of soil over the man named G’raha Tia.
This world on the brink did not need a scholar whose greatest accomplishment was his research on an empire that never graced its history. It needed a leader to show them the way forward when all around them had fell down. It needed someone who could deliver unto them a hero to save and inspire them. It needed a sacrifice for the price of this victory would be a steep one. To be that leader, that magus, that sacrifice, he pulled the hood of the Crystal Exarch over his head, committing to a path where he cannot fully live in the present and must keep his eyes ever forward. It was why he always remained a step apart even in the face of the loneliness, longing, and loss that made his heart ache day after endless day.
Yet all that resolve and conviction came apart when the moment she looked at him—him, not the Exarch—and said his name. Thrice now, she’s called him G’raha and trice now, he found himself unable to react as the Crystal Exarch would.
Unfortunately, she misunderstood.
“I… I’m sorry…" she stammered, sounding as though she too was about to cry. "I didn’t know what came over me… It was just… I don't know... I'm sorry."
He choked back his laughter as he shook his head. “You’ve nothing to apologize for,” he assured. “The name rings strange to my ear is all. Long as I have been the Crystal Exarch, it has ceased to be an act. This is very much who I am now.”
Pacified, Estrild nodded. “Would you prefer to called ‘Exarch’ then?”
Would he? When she spoke to him as the young man he once was, G’raha Tia could not help but stir within. And with him, the memories of the days where they explored the Crystal Tower with their allies. Fond memories. Precious memories. Memories that shaped him into who he was now. Once they were awake, ‘twas impossible to lull them back to sleep when she was right here.
“You may call me whatever you like,” he decided. “G’raha Tia or the Crystal Exarch. Either one shall suffice." Though the former may lead to confusion among the Crystarium, he realized. And gossip, but he supposed he would simply address that as needed. In time.
“Very well then," she agreed, but made no attempt to call him either. With a sigh, she glanced around at the shack they found themselves in before her eyes rested upon the door Thancred had left slightly ajar. "Might we speak outside?"
Was there anything in the Source and its shards he could deny her? His identity, mayhaps, back when he was playing his part, but that matter was irrelevant now and so he agreed without a second thought.
'Twas already midday. The Exarch raised a hand to shield his eyes as they adjusted to the sudden brightness. Once they did, he looked over to Estrild and saw her bending down to slip off her heeled boots.
Leaving them behind in the sand, she walked down the beach to the very edge of the water, close enough for the waves to barely graze the tips of her toes before they drew back to the ocean's embrace.
It went on like so for a few such cycles, her watching the sea and him watching her, before she took a deep breath and stepped into the water.
She could be a sea-maid from a Corvosi folktale, the Exarch thought, almost dizzyingly, as she ventured further out until the water was halfway to her knees. Guiding lost sailors to safety—or luring them to their deaths.
As though she could hear his thoughts, Estrild looked over to him and held her hand out to him. Again, who was he to deny her? If she intended to drown him as punishment for his sins, he would gladly accept her judgment.
The Exarch undid the straps of his sandals and stepped into the water, the crimson of his robes not quite blending into the sea as well the blue of her skirt did. She did not withdraw her hand as he approached, so he took it with his left.
“It feels nice, doesn't it?”
He nodded and closed his eyes, basking in the warmth of the sun, the chill of salty water against his legs, and her hand in his. He heard a bird—a gull?—call in the distance and for a moment he could pretend they were but a pair of ordinary people enjoying an ordinary day at the beach.
When he opened his eyes again with a sigh, Estrild was looking at him with a fond smile.
But he could not bear the sight of that smile when the reality of all his secrets threatened to drag him back down into the watery grave of Emet-Selch’s illusionary city.
The Exarch took a deep breath, knowing he could not delay any longer. “Urianger told you all the truth, I presume?”
“He did,” Estrild confirmed, “He told us the vision he claimed to have seen in the Rift was no vision at all, but a future you lived.”
“It is.”
“I also… I also saw a vision with my Echo. In the Umbilicus.”
The Exarch smiled wryly, thinking the precautions he had taken to ensure she never had a reason to enter the Umbilicus had not been unwarranted after all. “What did you see?”
“You just told Urianger the truth of who you were. You said… history remembered me, as you knew it would. And that you will suffer no other to rescue the champion whose star has charted your course. You said…” She trailed off, blinking rapidly.
“‘I will see this tale to a happy end, my friend,’” the Exarch finished, unable to stop himself from brushing a stray tear away with his crystal thumb. “‘There has been enough tragedy.’”
“A happy end…” she repeated with a sniff. “I understand why you wanted to keep your plan to sacrifice yourself a secret. You were right. I would have tried to stop you if I had known. But what I don’t understand is… why was it necessary to pretend you were using me all along?”
“Weren’t I, though?” the Exarch looked away and out into the horizon, unable to bear the emotion in her question. No anger, no hatred. Just hurt. Hurt he caused. “I brought you to this world after summoning your friends’ souls. A genuine accident on my part, yes, but you had no reason to believe that. No reason to believe I would do everything in my power to send them back should you choose to walk away. A villain holding your friends hostage, forcing you to endanger yourself over and over again to keep them safe… That is the narrative I imagine would have been written had all gone to plan.”
“That is not what I asked,” Estrild replied with a sharpness she’d never pointed at him before as she grasped his hand in both her own as though she was afraid the tides would pull him away if she did not. “If every person who ever ‘used’ me was but a villain in my story, the Scions would have made for terrible hostages.”
You would have come for them regardless, his mind instantly argued. Because that was the kind of person she was. If Heavensward was to be believed, most of Ishgard despised her simply for being an Au Ra when she first entered the city in search of sanctuary. After the Dragonsong War was brought to an end, half of them continued to despise her as a foreign interloper. And yet, even knowing what the people of the Holy See thought of her from the beginning, she still fought to protect them from Nidhogg and his horde. I’d been counting on that selflessness from the start.
Yet none of that was what she wanted to hear. “I hoped that I would be unmourned by you and yours,” the Exarch confessed. The Crystarium still would because she would not hold them to account for the actions of their leader when they’ve done nothing but welcome her. “It was as I said. Your tale will continue, and my role in it will scarcely be remembered. The last thing I wanted was to cause you more pain.”
“You did not think the betrayal of someone I trusted would not hurt?” Her voice was the echo of a wound struck deep to the heart. Even more so when she let out a trembling exhale and took a step forward to rest her forehead against his shoulder. “I did trust you, despite everything. Y’shtola thought me naïve, but I thought… I’ve been betrayed before… I just… I don’t know…”
Defenses surfaced immediately. You were and yet you held fast; I believed you will again. I thought it better if you were to look back and think of me with hatred instead of sorrow. But they were all merely excuses meant to assuage the guilt he surely would have felt in his final moments.
“There is no explanation that can justify that oversight,” he conceded, desperately wanting to hold her as she cried against his shoulder while knowing he was unworthy of providing such comfort. “In my vanity, I failed to truly consider your feelings. No amount of apologies can make it up to you, but I apologize all the same. I’m sorry.”
She fell quiet for so long he had time to wonder if Thancred was about to return to the shack to find them gone.
At last, she raised her head. “I think… I’ve forgiven you already. I am so happy you are alive. Everything else doesn’t seem to matter in comparison.”
Forgiveness, it seemed, weighed heavier than condemnation. The Exarch forced himself to look at her. He thought he spent the most of his tears when she walked up to embrace him and said ‘tis good to see you awake, but nevertheless, his throat tightened and the corner of his vision blurred ever so slight. He’d never been afraid to die for a cause he believed in, but to live for something—for someone was something different altogether. “I am happy to be alive.”
“No more secrets?”
The Exarch lifted her hand and kissed her forefinger. “No more secrets,” he promised.
“That is all I can ask for now. Thank you, G’raha. For everything.”